Travel that keeps family connected.

Because some trips are too important to leave to chance.

Both of my parents are now in their eighties. A few years ago, I joined them on a cross-country trip: Greensboro, NC to Seattle, WA with connecting flights. Somewhere in the middle of it all, I understood something I hadn't before.

Getting them to the airport, navigating security, finding the right gate: none of it was complicated, exactly. But all of it mattered. My parents had been seasoned travelers, had seen the world together before my brother and I came along. But travel had changed, and so had they. By the time we landed back home, they both admitted what I'd already sensed mid-trip: they couldn't have done it without me.

My dad was showing early signs of Alzheimers — nothing that touched his daily life, yet. He was still playing pickleball, still volunteering, still out in the yard. But airports are a different kind of test. Arriving somewhere late at night, picking up a rental car, navigating to a hotel - things that were once second nature were simply no longer in the picture.

My mom's older sister lived about an hour outside Tampa. My mom had been planning a visit — a few weeks together, long overdue. But my mom doesn't drive, and her vision impairment makes navigating airports genuinely overwhelming. Her sister, meanwhile, couldn't make the drive through Tampa traffic to pick her up.

So I made a day of it. Early morning, I drove my mom to Charlotte, NC, flew down to Tampa, FL with her, rented a car, and got her to my aunt's door in time for lunch. Then I turned around: car back, flight home, drove to the office, and put in a few hours of work before the day was done.

It was a lot of miles. But my aunt had just lost her husband a few months before, and these two sisters needed time together. Without that trip, they simply wouldn't have had it.